When I am at my grandma’s house, cooking for a large group (14 for dinner) I have to figure out something that will fee the large group as well as not something we’ve had recently. And the easier it is, the better. Randomly, making bbq chicken that could be made into sandwiches came to mind. It seemed easy enough plus it was low effort (well, sort of).

I brought along my big electric roaster to use (have tools, will travel) as it is hard sometimes to know what my grandma has and doesn’t have up there. In fact, I bring most of my own stuff up when I cook. I then went back and forth while at the store on how many chickens to buy. I had planned on four but each chicken was about 6 pounds so 24 pounds seemed like a lot. But 3 didn’t seem right. Plus my cart was FULL and I was starting to wonder how much this was all going to cost me. In the end I went with 4 chickens. Better to have too much than not enough (or just enough). I think I’m starting to fall into my other grandma’s philosophy of “if you walk away from the table hungry, it’s your own fault”. At least when I cook for bigger groups I’m much prefer to have lots of food and have leftovers than have just enough, or not enough.

Anyway, I put the 4 chickens in the roaster (they all just fit – whew) and turned it on 300 degrees. I put them breast side down (does it matter??!) although I hadn’t intended to do it that way exactly. I think I got distracted pretending the chickens were flying and making the kids laugh. I also used about half of a small jar (1.1 ounce) of Penzeys Old World seasoning. I covered them with it. I’m not sure exactly how much it mattered. I knew that, since I hadn’t take the skin off it was likely that none was going to make it into the actual finished product but I was letting it try to get some extra flavor.

After around 4 hours I turned it off and took the chickens out to start cooling a bit and to start dismantling them.

This was the not-so-low-effort part but it wasn’t too bad. There were just some times of it being really hot and I think I lightly burned my fingers.

After the chicken was all dismantled, I put it back in the roaster and continued to break it apart. For the sauce I used three whole bottles of regular Sweet Baby Ray’s bbq sauce. I felt like I was cheating a but but I’ve always used bottled sauce for my pulled pork, etc. plus, for some reason we had 5-6 bottles in the cupboard at home. Seemed like a no brainer.

In the end we had plenty, with plenty of leftovers. It was nice and juicy and tender and tasted great. Since we did have so much I would say that 3 chickens would probably have been enough. We may have still had some leftover. But I was happy, it all worked out.